Cable briefs

Press, 12 May 1981, Page 8

Cable briefs

Novelist dies Nelson Algren, author of “The Man With the Golden Arm” and “Walk on the Wild Side,” has died aged 72. Algren was found in his home by a guest arriving for a party to celebrate Algren’s upcoming induction into the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. The cause of death was not immediately known. Algren’s fiction was dosed with the harsh realities of lower-class life. “The Man With the Golden Arm,” the story of a jazz trumpeter and drug addict, later was made into a film starring Frank Sinatra and won the National Book Award in 1950.—New York. ‘P.M. r too distant’ Britain’s honeymoon with the Prime Minister (Mrs Margaret -Thatcher) is over, according to a Gallup poll in the “Sunday Telegraph.” Seventy per cent of those questioned in the poll said that Mrs Thatcher was dividing the country, rather than unifying it. And 73 per cent found her too distant from the working class and ordinary people. Another criticism — voiced by 66 per cent of those polled — was that she did not understand the problems caused by the increased cost of living. Last week the Conservative Party lost heavily in local government polls.—London. Liberals boosted Zimbabwe’s former Trade and Commerce Minister. David Smith, has resigned from Parliament and from the all-white Rhodesian Front, giving a boost to newly organised dissident white liberals. Mr Smith, the only white member of Robert Mugabe’s Cabinet, recently quit as a Minister, pleading ill-health. He will now join the Democratic Party, recently formed by a former Deputy Minister, Andre Holland.—Salisbury.